Report on the Session: Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Physical Delivery of Library Material

Scherelene Schatz, JerseyCat and JerseyClicks Project Manager at the New Jersey State Library, presented “Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Physical Delivery of Library Material” at the CLA Conference on Monday, April 19. Schatz also is a member of ALA’s Rethinking Resource Sharing Delivery Committee, charged with creating a national brand for home delivery that could be used for libraries anywhere who want to experiment with home delivery, and with exploring the potential of connection existing library couriers that do library-to-library delivers on set routes into larger regional or nationally linked systems. Her presentation was a report on the results of home delivery systems in operation. The program was sponsored by CLA’s Resource Sharing Section.

Schatz reviewed the top four excuses libraries usually make for not offering home delivery, and refuted each one, as follows:

1. It is expensive – this applies mainly to postage.
2. It is labor intensive – use of materials bins can help reduce this.
3. Customers are less likely to return materials – N.J. has found this to be false; their home delivery service has experienced 0 losses.
4. Our online system does not support home delivery – If the system supports holds it can be done, if home delivery is made a location code within the system.

Reasons Schatz gave for libraries to offer home delivery can be reduced down to the fact that our patrons are used to fast, efficient, home delivery from services like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and they want the same from their libraries. She furnished examples of libraries with successful home delivery systems in several different states.

Three libraries in New Jersey offer home delivery, all funded by the State Library via regional library networks, namely Burlington County Library, Gloucester County Library, and Princeton Public Library. Though there are differences in the implementation of each of the three libraries, patron use of home delivery has increased in each of them. She does not think that home delivery has adversely affected foot traffic in any of the three libraries; rather, home delivery serves another group of patrons entirely. She also noted that only one item has been lost so far, and that was due to a patron, not the service.

Schatz encouraged attendees to explore the potential of connecting existing library couriers that do library-to-library deliveries on set routes into larger regional or nationally linked systems. She advised standards for library courier services to interconnect, as follows:

• Standard circulation period (3-4 weeks?)
• Standard labeling practices
• Standard packaging

In a Q & A session at the close of her presentation, Schatz stated that New Jersey has about 65 Z target libraries: regions borrow and lend within their own consortiums first, then through JerseyCat. She has not yet calculated any cost savings to New Jersey from the home delivery service.

For more information about South Jersey’s home delivery pilot and relevant statistics, see http://www.sjrlc.org/mail/.

Sponsor: Resource Sharing Section

Reporter: Eric Hansen